NBN will worsen piracy: leaked cable

A 2010 cable from the Canberra Embassy to the White House, outed by Wikileaks last week, warns that the roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN) will worsen the levels of copyright theft in Australia.

A 2010 cable from the Canberra Embassy to the White House, outed by Wikileaks last week, warns that the roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN) will worsen the levels of copyright theft in Australia.

"The hope for AFACT and the big studios was that a favourable decision would have established an international precedent that could have forced ISPs to tightly police the activities of their customers," the cable said. "AFACT will likely increase its lobbying of the Australian government for legislative changes.

"In the meantime, the problem will persist and probably worsen with the advent of Australia's high-speed National Broadband Network, as the speeds at which copyright theft can take place will literally multiply."

Telstra dominates leaked cables

Australia's incumbent telecommunications provider Telstra was a hot topic of conversation in the leaked cables, appearing in five cables outed by Wikileaks on Friday.

In the earliest cable from March 2007, the Melbourne Embassy concluded, following a meeting with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, that a failure by the then-Howard Government to structurally separate Telstra as a reason why there had been a delay in rolling out a fibre network to Australia.

"Splitting Telstra's infrastructure and product divisions would have made the transition to fibre networks more rational and easier to regulate. However, this was politically untenable at the time, likely because the government wanted to maintain the company's share price before the sell-off. As the benefits of making the switch to a fibre network are substantial, especially in a country with Australia's geographic peculiarities, it will likely go forward with Telstra in the driver's seat."

As the newly installed Rudd Labor government moved ahead on its NBN project, a cable from July 2008 notes that progress on the government's plan had stalled due to a lack of cooperation with Telstra. The cable notes that "after a warm beginning, relations between Telstra and the Rudd Government have begun to deteriorate", and while Telstra had initially liked Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, because he "had the fine quality of not being Helen Coonan, the Howard Government's last Minister for Communications", talk of structural separation of the telco had Telstra threatening legal action.